America, land of the free, home of the brave.

I was born an American. I will always be grateful to have been given that great gift, and proud of my heritage as a citizen of the United States of America.

And what is that heritage?

We believe governments are created to serve the people, that they derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We believe that government officials have no powers that have not been specifically authorized by our Constitution or laws.

We now have an Administration that deliberately and coldly manipulates public opinion through fearmongering and propaganda, and treats our Constitution and traditions with total contempt.

We have a Congress so spineless and corrupt that they have been willing to allow human torture and wars of agression to become part of out American history, following the bloody examples of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

And we have a Supreme Court populated with political hacks willing to betray principal for partisan advantage.

We once suffered through a horrifying Civil War started by traitors to America to gain constitutional protection for the vile crime of human slavery.

But today is worse. The morally degenerate descendents of Jeff Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest have lied and cheated their way into power, and their perverse ideas are creating death and destruction on a worlwide scale.

To say the President has absolute power to declare any human on earth an enemy without rights is to violate the basic principle on which America was founded - that human rights are absolute and that government powers must be limited.

Let us understand what is at stake; let us understand the meaning of what the Republicans are saying.

Day after day, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all their foul cronies are saying the same thing: Death to America.